Strategy vs. Power

Risk is board game I recently played with some friends that vaguely represents a war and domination over parts of the world and these empires battling against each other to gain more land. I saw that the person who won had a technique of improving his army in only one of his "sections" rather than expanding his empire across the world. I knew, in this "Brains vs. Brawn" game, that brains had a better chance of winning because obviously, in my case, my Brawn technique of spreading my empire across the world didn't work because my focus wasn't mostly on my plan, only my expansion. I know this a horrible example of a real war because you can both expand and plan in reality, but I wondered which was more important in a war for success in real life, Brains vs. Brawn.

Although I know both having a big army and having a strategic "game plan" are both equally important, I wondered if one had more importance than the other. In the 2007 film, 300, it depicted 300 Greeks holding off more than 1 million invading Persians. Despite defeat, the Spartans used their knowledge of terrain and other tactics, like a corpse-made wall, to hold off the massive army.

Joseph Stalin also thought that ideas were more powerful than guns. This influential leader said, "Education is a weapon whose effects depend on who holds it in his hands and at whom it is aimed." Good education can definitely win a battle through stratigraphical warfare to even the odds of being outnumbered. Planning attacks can have an advantage to exploit weaknesses, use geographic, biological, political, or any other type of advances to get the needed edge. However, can a huge army still overtake any plan a smaller one has?

Alexander the Great was known to have one of the largest empires in history, taking southern Europe, or most of Asia Minor, as his own. Even the United Kingdom's empire wanted to expand to the newly founded North America in the 1600's. Point being, many popular empires sought out the meaning, "bigger is better". Some obvious advantages come with a huge empire and/or army. The more you have, the more you can send out to attack.

In my opinion, strategical planning can counteract an army with massive amounts of soldiers because having smart moves can "pick off" a big army piece by piece. However, this is like comparing speed and power in a boxing match. Both can overcome if given the chance. Even though this argument might be biased towards many factors and situations in a given war, Brains outweighs Brawn in my opinion. On the other hand, maybe we can never compare these two interpretations because they might be equally important.